


In This New World

by tarblacks0ul



Category: Girl's Day (Band), K-pop, VIXX
Genre: Aliens, Angst, F/M, Romance, Science Fiction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-03
Updated: 2015-09-03
Packaged: 2018-04-18 19:58:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 13
Words: 15,289
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4718615
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tarblacks0ul/pseuds/tarblacks0ul
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For two civilians in a city decimated by alien invasion, the lines between love, war, and survival become increasingly blurred.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Now

**Author's Note:**

> This story is heavily inspired by the TV show _Falling Skies._
> 
> Written for bluedreaming for the ForVIXX fic exchange.

They didn’t talk much about the day the world ended.

Since that day, his focus had simply been survival. There wasn’t much left in the burnt-out husk that was once the city of Los Angeles. Its freeways were quiet, its downtown deserted. The rusted-out ruins of cars still sat lined up on the 110, on their way to nowhere. Some of their doors were still open, their panicked passengers and drivers having leapt out to forge ahead on foot. Others were still in the cars when the phase fire hit, incinerating them instantly. Still others plummeted through the yawning cracks in the overpasses, concrete sliced by phase fire as easily as a knife through an apple.

The party rode down Laurel Canyon Road in their Jeeps, motorcycles, and trucks—only the most practical of vehicles were still in use anymore—to pick through whatever resources they could still locate on what remained of Sunset Boulevard. The glittering hotels, trendy night clubs, and glitzy boutiques lay abandoned and neglected; a dilapidated billboard once advertising designer jeans hung cracked and ruined overhead. Granted, the aliens cared more about destroying the first world’s military strongholds rather than popular night spots, but little had been spared in their campaign.

Least of all human lives.

Hakyeon and Sojin pulled up on their motorbikes next to what was left of the Standard Hotel and night club. Swinging a long leg over her bike, Sojin casually hoisted her shotgun over one shoulder, hair falling in a thick cascade over the other. Hakyeon strode through the door behind her, shouldering his own weapon, a second handgun tucked into his boot and a knife into his belt. He no longer remembered what it was like not to be packing heat. He no longer could imagine a life in which he’d walk through these doors free of care, hearing the pulsing beat of dance music rather than the whine of sirens, inhaling the heady scent of perfume and cigarette smoke rather than the stale odor of decay.

There wasn’t much left to sift through here. The scattered bands of surviving Angelinos had picked the place clean. Sojin strode behind the bar anyway, kneeling down behind the counter scattered with broken glass and the sticky remains of the spirits it once held. She arose a moment later, a grin across her face and a bottle in her hand. “They missed this one.”

“We’re on a mission,” Hakyeon pointed out as she unscrewed the lid and casually took a swig, smooth white throat bobbing a the amber liquid slid past it.

“The world’s a shithole, what else is new?” She passed him the bottle.

He frowned, but took a sip anyway, whiskey searing a path down his throat and simmering in his empty stomach. He handed the bottle back to Sojin, who stashed it in her pack.

At that moment, the radio strapped to her belt crackled to life. “Incoming hostiles. Abort mission.”

_Shit._ Cursing, Sojin and Hakyeon readied their weapons and scrambled for the door, skidding to a stop as phase fire blasted through the window directly in front of them. They scrambled behind the bar, taking turns providing cover fire as the phase rays whizzed above their heads and seared into the counter. The fire undoubtedly came from the aliens’ ground troops, in one of their many sweeps of the city in a bid to root out any human stragglers. The troops might’ve been extraterrestrial grunts, but they—or more accurately their weapons—were still deadly, and the suits of some high-tech armor they wore made hand-to-hand combat an impossibility. Despite their armor, they were devastatingly quick and agile, and it hadn’t taken Hakyeon long to learn that the best way to deal with them was to pump them full of as many rounds as he could, then run like hell. Gunfire rarely killed them, unless you were a great shot and could land a bullet right between the eyes—even then, their hides were tough to crack, and it might require more than one bullet.

“Guys, we are dying in here, literally,” Sojin shouted into her radio while Hakyeon provided cover fire. “We’re behind the bar. It’s not going to hold for long.”

Hakyeon dropped back behind the bar. “I’m out of ammo.”

Sojin rose to provide cover fire as he reloaded. He was down to his last clip.

“And I’m out.” Sojin dropped back behind the bar. At that moment, a deep crack opened in the bar, cutting a jagged path like like spilled beer flowing over the sticky surface. _Shit._

Through the crack, Hakyeon could see at least two troops making their way toward them at nine o’clock and twelve o’clock. Probably a third coming from the three o’clock position, if their usual attack pattern held. The only chance they had now was to make a break for it.

Sojin reached for his hand, her palm slick with sweat and blood. She must’ve cut her hand on some glass or something. His fingers curled around hers, and squeezed.

“We go together,” she said.

He nodded.

“Now!”

She stood and made a break for the door as he followed, providing a continuous shower of cover fire. The aliens returned it in earnest. Pain exploded into his right thigh, a familiar sensation—phase burn.

“Go!” he told Sojin.

“Not without you.”

“One of us has to get out of this. Don’t make this a waste of my time.”

She glared at him, but the troubled look in her dark eyes belied her anger. “You’re an asshole,” she said, and ran.

He fired. Nothing. He was out of ammo. Quick as a flash, he whipped the handgun out of his boot and kept firing, slowly moving backward. Just as he ran out of bullets, the crack of more gunfire rent the air. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw one of the troops go down. The distraction cost him. A dark blur jumped him and he went sprawling on his back, broken glass biting into his skin as he frantically scrambled for purchase. The alien was on him, rancid breath burning against his face, foul venom dripping from its lips, soulless eyes staring into his.

He reached for his belt, bloody palm sliding across the handle of his knife. With a strangled cry, he thrust it upward right between those glowing green eyes.

Viscous black liquid slid down his knife, mixing with the crimson streaks of his old blood, burning as it hit his fingers. The alien’s body jerked violently, and with a dull groan, finally collapsed limply on top of him.

Hakyeon sagged on the floor, grip finally loosening on the handle of the knife. A moment later, the heavy body was forcibly hoisted off of him, and he found himself gazing into the concerned brown eyes of his friend.

“Jesus Christ,” Jaehwan muttered, seemingly as much a prayer as an epithet, as he stared at the dead alien.

“Goddamnit, Hakyeon!” Another voice caught his attention, and he looked over to see the flashing eyes of Sojin. “I am not here for this hero bullshit, you hear me? Don’t you _ever_ do that again!”

She smacked his arm, not seeming to care about his injuries.

“Why, Sojin, I didn’t know you cared.”

Her only response was to shoot him a look of pure venom.

Jaehwan’s gaze bounced back and forth between the pair in a mixture of amusement and concern. Then, “We need to move on; too damn many troops here and not enough bounty worth scavenging. I can’t believe we let these assholes take us by surprise.”

“They’re getting more vigilant,” Sojin remarked.

“Something’s happening,” Hakyeon said.


	2. Now

The camp was located above the city, in the hills of Laurel Canyon overlooking the valley. What had once been the haven of L.A’s elite lay in as much ruins as the rest of the city; unlike the rest, the aliens didn’t take much interest in it. Nothing much up here, Hakyeon supposed, but rich people’s abandoned homes. And while their mansions provided the ragtag group with a large enough place to squat, they were good for little else. Power was on the blink, as the aliens didn’t particularly care to preserve human infrastructure; same with water.

Nobody knew what their endgame was. Colonization of Earth? Maybe, except that they seemed less interested in colonizing humans as they did in exterminating them. Nobody had any name for them, not in any human or alien tongue, because they’d never bothered to communicate. The aliens weren’t interested in that. Crippling the human civilization seemed more their priority.

The group had scavenged what little they could before returning home, venturing into the no man’s land below Sunset to see if they could find anything there. They had little luck, but at least they made it out without another attack. Not even the aliens wanted anything to do with anywhere below Sunset.

As evening fell over the ruined city, the breeze brought a sudden bite with it. Autumn was coming to the southland. The power was on the fritz again, so Hakyeon had a fire going in the mansion’s fireplace (he had no idea why a home in southern California needed a fireplace, but at least it was a real one and not one of those fake ones mostly there for aesthetics). He settled back on the once-luxurious rug with a mug of instant ramen noodles (he was not surprised that of all the foods on Earth, those survived an apocalypse) which he ate with mismatched chopsticks. He’d heard that it was a major no-no in Japanese culture. Mismatched chopsticks were only used for death rituals.

Well, the world as they all knew it was dead. Close enough.

The group’s current campsite was a deserted mansion left surprisingly undamaged in the attack. Hakyeon had no idea what had become of its occupants, but he suspected they’d left in a hurry, since many of their possessions remained in the home. The gold and platinum records decorating the front hall suggested that this had once been the abode of a high-powered record exec; the relative lack of family photos suggested that he or she was likely single. The living room was a large, cavernous space boasting a stark and minimalist aesthetic; glass doors opened out onto a patio overlooking the San Fernando valley. In the days following the invasion, many surviving Angelinos had fled to the valley for refuge; the fatalities there were as much from fellow survivors jockeying for shelter and supplies as they were from their extraterrestrial invaders. Eventually, the valley emptied out and was now largely deserted save for the occasional gang of brigands. Once again, it had become a no man’s land.

Hakyeon was still ruminating in front of the fire and barely noticed when another person sank down next to him, until he heard the words, “Care for some fruit with your recommended daily allowance of MSG?”

A faint smile crossed his face and he glimpsed Sojin sitting next to him, holding out half a bruised apple. He didn’t know where she scavenged that from. She was resourceful. Always had been, as long as they’d known each other.

She also had the whiskey. He wasn’t sure if he should be impressed that it survived today’s attack and that she’d managed to bring back to the camp.

“Keeping it classy tonight,” she quipped, pouring the amber liquid into two chipped coffee mugs.

“Thanks.” He lifted one of the mugs and took a long sip. The whiskey warmed him where the fire didn’t.

“How you know you’re from SoCal—you’ve got a fire going when it hits the lower sixties,” she joked.

He managed to crack a smile, but he knew that her levity was a front, a coping mechanism. She made inappropriate jokes to stave off the reality of their new lives. He would laugh at them and try to remember who he was. Lather, rinse, repeat.

“How’s your leg?”

In the midst of almost getting killed, he’d forgotten about the phase burn on his thigh. “It’s been better.”

“Let me have a look.” Setting her meager dinner aside, Sojin gently peeled back the makeshift bandage he’d wrapped around his leg—a rag torn from the sleeve of his shirt—and peeled back the ruins of his cargo pants. The flesh was red, flaming, and angry, blisters popping up like the few intact buildings left in the city.

“Well,” she said, “I’ve seen worse.”

“I can handle it.”

“I’ll get the doc.”

“Don’t. There are others who need it more.” They were lucky that they’d fallen in with a survivor possessing an M.D. Before the aliens, Taekwoon had been interning with a plastic surgeon to the stars. Now he’d graduated from rhinoplasty and Botox injections to phase burns and GSWs. Just another day after the apocalypse.

“At least let me find some medication for it,” Sojin insisted.

Hakyeon didn’t argue. She returned several moments later with a tube of cream and a prescription bottle. “Gotta love rich people… always a handy supply of legal narcotics on hand.”

He washed the pill down with the whiskey as she carefully re-dressed his wound. The fire crackled beside them.

He knew that they would not be cold that evening—her body would keep him warm, and vice versa. They’d claim the first unoccupied bed they’d find and fall asleep in a tangle of limbs and sheets, and when the first rays of sunlight slanted through the cracked windows, one of them would undoubtedly be gone.

When Hakyeon woke alone the following morning, he figured he’d know where to find Sojin. Wincing, he unwrapped the makeshift bandages to check his leg. It wasn’t looking great, but it was better. He re-wrapped the bandages, tugged on a fresh pair of pants, and took a few steps. Just a flesh wound—he’d be fine.

He made his way out to the mansion’s huge garage and sure enough, there Sojin was, tinkering with one of her many weapons. Before the aliens came, she’d been a phD candidate in mechanical engineering, though these days it seemed her skills were mostly useful in fixing things.

At least she had more to contribute than a dancer did.

“Teach me something,” she’d asked one evening early in their acquaintance. It was still summer then, the air balmy, whispering across the tops of their empty wine glasses and the bottle absconded from the mansion’s now-emptied pantry. They sat on the patio, the valley spread out before them in its tawdry glory, and it was almost possible to forget what the world was now.

“You mean like, dance?”

“Unless you have another specialty I don’t know about.” Her dark eyes glinted with mischief. “Can you lift me like one of your dance partners?”

“There’s a technique, you know,” he said. “I don’t just lift women like weights. You’ve got to help.”

“Of course, like men can do anything without our help,” she cracked.

“This is highly dangerous, you know.”

“We are an endangered species in a world overcome by murderous aliens, and _this_ is dangerous?”

She had a point.

Even as he watched her tinker with a gun, he still recalled her graceful fingers curling around his, her silky hair whispering against his skin, her silvery laughter as he hoisted her into the air. She shrieked and grabbed at him, causing him to stumble, and they both tumbled to the floor of the patio. He instinctively moved below her to absorb the fall, leaving her sprawled on top of him. Her hair streamed around his face, smelling sweetly of fresh summer air despite the lack of luxuries in their lives.

He did something dangerous then, far more so than fighting aliens or teaching women to dance.

He kissed her.

She looked up, catching his eye almost knowingly, as though she’d sensed where his thoughts had wandered. He broke eye contact, pretending to be studying her weapon. “Everything fixed up?”

“It’ll take out some aliens, if it must.” She set the gun aside. “Scouts returned this morning. There’s more news on that militia up north.”

Though most of the country’s military bases had been decimated in the invasion, apparently enough stragglers, retired, and ex-military had made their way to the bay area to form this militia. According to rumor, they had been having some success against the alien invaders. They were led by a man called the Dragon, whose real name was Kris Wu. The circumstances surrounding his dishonorable discharge were murky, but the prevailing theory seemed to be that he’d deserted in the midst of a tour and was considered a traitor.

“Sounds like the kind of guy I’d want leading me,” Hakyeon said dryly.

“I agree, but he’s also all we’ve got,” Sojin remarked.

“A valid point.”

“Jaehwan thinks we should head north to find them, and I’m inclined to agree,” Sojin said. “As nice as our current digs are, there’s nothing much left for us here. That wasn’t even good whiskey from our last run.”

Irreverent humor aside, Hakyeon had to agree. He still felt unsettled after their last supply run. There was something going on down here with the aliens, and he didn’t want to stick around and find out.

“We’ll call a meeting,” he said. “See what the others have to say.” He didn’t expect they’d hear much dissent, though. Though no one relished the idea of picking up and moving on through potentially dangerous territory, it was probably their best chance. If there was anything the group understood, it was doing what they had to in order to survive.


	3. Before

In the weeks after the invasion, Hakyeon had been adrift. He wasn’t even a native Angelino—a professional dancer, he’d traveled from New York with his company for a couple of shows in the Southland. When the first volley of alien missiles hit, his sole priority was _survival._ He wasn’t sure if it had ever changed.

He had lost track of his fellow dancers, either dead or simply lost to him in the chaos. He was on his own. 

The alley ended in a dead end, trapping him between a dumpster and certain death. In the months since the attack he’d been eking out a meager existence in the remains of Korea Town, occasionally running into other scattered survivors. None of them thought to organize. None of them were trained in the arts of war or combat. They obtained their weapons the way they obtained anything else—scavenging, mostly from the now-abandoned law enforcement stations or the occasional right-wing gun enthusiast who kept a firearm in his or her home. Hakyeon wasn’t sure where his weapons had come from; he’d traded for them. But even his trusty shotgun would not ward off three approaching troops.

_Shit_. He was smarter than this. He knew better. How had he let himself be lured into this cursed alley? He cursed this unfamiliar city that was now his home, these invaders who’d forced this existence on him.

Well, there was really only one thing left for him to do. He raised his weapon and prepared to pump those bastards full of as many rounds as he could get off before he fell.

He managed to take down one of the approaching troops, but there was no time for pride. As the seconds ticked off of what would likely be the last moments of his life, there was really no time to think of anything including how little he’d be leaving behind.

The noise in the alley seemed to multiply. Over the wheeze of the alien’s phase weapons, the crack of further gunfire rang out. Phase fire whizzed past his head. The troop standing in front of him froze and seemed to waver for a split-second before it collapsed at his feet. Viscous black alien blood splashed onto his boots and oozed into the cracked asphalt.

The roar of a motorcycle engine snapped him into focus. Its rider, shotgun aimed directly into the alley, shouted, “Get on!”

Hakyeon staggered to his feet, boots slipping in alien blood, snatching up his weapon as an afterthought. His savior continued firing her weapon at incoming reinforcements. Flaming red hair streamed out from under her scratched helmet and gleamed in the sunlight. His movements uncharacteristically clumsy, Hakyeon swung a long leg over the motorcycle and hopped onto the seat behind her, looping an arm around her slender waist.

“Cover me!” his savior ordered. With his free hand, Hakyeon fired off several shots as the motorcycle peeled off down the street.

He was out of ammo. With shaking fingers he reloaded while his companion fired, steering the bike with one hand.

“Hold on tight,” she warned once he’d reloaded and was ready to provide cover fire.

The bike whizzed through streets and alleys and screeched around hairpin turns, deserted storefronts and abandoned vehicles flying by in a blur. Whoever this woman was, her knowledge of this city was prolific. Judging by their current ride, she was _definitely_ a seasoned L.A driver. Her circuitous route was enough to shake any possible alien tails, or else they had concluded that these two humans were more trouble than they were worth. Whatever the reason, they continued north with no further incident, though their speed never once abated.

Taking the back streets, they made their way past Sunset and up toward Laurel Canyon, into the shelter of the hills overlooking the city. It was then that Hakyeon learned where the last of the Angelinos had fled to. It wasn’t until they pulled up in front of the imposing abandoned mansion that he thought to tell his new friend, “Thanks.”

“Don’t mention it. You’re either extremely dumb or new here; either way, you didn’t deserve to die like that.”

Well, she certainly had a way with words.

“I’m not from here,” he told her. “I take it you are?”

“Born and bred. I’m Sojin.”

“Hakyeon.” He reached out to shake her hand. Her palms were calloused, her nails short and bearing chipped nail polish as blood-red as her hair.

She removed her helmet, shaking her hair out. It gleamed in the fading light like the fires after the first volley of the invasion. Beautiful and deadly.

“A bunch of us have camped out here. We go into the city for supply runs sometimes. Korea Town is damn near cleaned out; you’re getting out just in time.”

He couldn’t deny that.

“The canyon seems to be the last place left the aliens haven’t gotten to. I don’t know why. But for now, I won’t question it. You’re welcome to stay with us as long as you need to.”

And the rest, as they say, was history.


	4. Now

The group set out at dawn, pale rays of sunlight filtering through the blanket of smog that seemed permanently settled over the Los Angeles basin. In this early morning light, the city almost seemed peaceful, tranquil. The crisp air whispered across Hakyeon’s clothing as he packed up what few possessions he travelled with; few of the group owned much more than the clothes on their back. Given how often their invaders kept them on the move, it wouldn’t do to amass many things. With a backwards glance at the palatial mansions surrounding him, he reflected with dark amusement how meaningless these monuments to conspicuous consumption now were in this new world order.

The group formed a short convoy with the few vehicles they’d managed to commandeer. Most of the medical equipment was packed into a winnebago that doubled as the infirmary; the rest of the supplies and ammo were piled into Jeeps and pickup trucks. Scouts led the convoy and brought up the rear on motorcycles. Hakyeon and Sojin were in the former group, followed by Jaehwan, who rode in a jeep with a youth he’d befriended named Hyuk. The kid was barely more than a teenager, a college student left stranded in the southland when the first torpedoes hit. He had no idea how his family up north had fared, if they were still alive or not. Mass communications had pretty much ceased to exist after the attack. The possibility of capture by the aliens was not something any of them cared to contemplate. Nobody knew what went on with the captives—if they were killed, imprisoned, or kept alive and experimented on à la alien abduction stories of the past.

These invaders, however, were not the little green men of Roswell.

The convoy made their way over the other side of the hills and toward the valley. The 101 freeway wound around the base of the hills, a gruesome tableau of crushed concrete and warped metal in some places; abandoned vehicles still lined up on a journey to nowhere in others. The roads fared mildly better, though it was still necessary upon occasion for the group to maneuver around abandoned vehicles.

Everyone was on high alert as they made their way through the valley. The place was like a ghost town, much like the destroyed city; occasionally, shots rang out in the distance, accompanied by shouts and various sounds of destruction—glass shattering, metal crunching. For the most part, the trip proceeded without incident, though everyone breathed a sigh of relief once they cleared the valley and hit the open road.

Progress up north was slow. The freeways were mostly out of commission, cluttered with abandoned vehicles or debris, or simply destroyed. The aliens were a clever lot—not only did they decimate population centers, but they also took out the arterial roads surrounding them. That left the backstreets and smaller country roads, which made the trip a lot slower.

The group made camp for the first night somewhere outside Santa Barbara, in one of those little tourist-trap towns. Summerland, it was called. Long-abandoned in the wake of the invasion, the place had pretty much been picked clean. There wasn’t much to scavenge here. The group took refuge in what had once been a high school. They cased the place carefully before setting up camp, on high alert for alien troops. As far as everyone knew, the aliens had no interest in places like this, but one could never be too careful.

Once they concluded that the school was empty of either human or extraterrestrial occupants, it was time for dinner—this time, Hakyeon and Sojin boiled their water for ramen noodles over a pair of Bunsen burners in the chem lab (luckily, there was still power here). They were soon joined by Jaehwan and Hyuk, who seemed pleased as punch to have ridden at the front of the convoy.

“I take it your training has been going well?” Hakyeon asked.

The youth nodded, grinning. “Maybe I should’ve taken riflery instead of econ. It’s a lot more fun.”

“I somehow doubt UCLA had planned for an alien invasion,” said Sojin dryly.

The conversation shifted to where they would be now if they weren’t here.

“I’d probably be in the library now, cursing my existence for not starting this dissertation earlier,” Sojin said.

“I’d probably dreaming up yet another fictional scenario that still wouldn’t be as messed-up as our reality,” Jaehwan joked. “Too bad aliens don’t enjoy reading mysteries.”

“I’d be on my way back to New York, eating terrible airline food and watching a terrible movie,” Hakyeon added. “Probably an adaptation of one of Jaehwan’s books.”

Jaehwan threw a chopstick at him, while the others laughed.

“I’d probably be drowning in a sea of useless homework assignments,” Hyuk finished up. “You know, as shitty as this war is, it has kind of given me a new perspective. It’s kind of broken life down to the basics, you know? Like survival. None of the bullshit matters anymore.”

“Like most of our old jobs,” Sojin cracked.

An awkward silence fell over the group, and Hyuk quickly tried to break the tension. “I didn’t mean it that way.”

“I know you didn’t,” Jaehwan assured him.

“Hey, at least my skills are useful in fixing guns and motorbikes, and cooking ramen in a chemistry lab,” Sojin pointed out jokingly.

“I… can’t do much of anything,” Hakyeon admitted. “Well, I couldn’t before I learned to fire a gun.”

“Hey, you were in good physical shape,” Sojin pointed out. “You’ve got some people here who could barely _lift_ a gun, let alone fire one.”

“Yeah, like this kid here.” Jaehwan nudged Hyuk with his elbow.

“I’m sure you really worked your arms typing away at your laptop,” Hyuk fired back.

“Hey, I had to lift those stacks of books for book signings. How do you think I got these guns?” Jaehwan flexed, and everyone groaned.

“What?” he demanded. “We can’t all be dancers like Hakyeon or gym rats like Hongbin and Won-shik.” The two young men had joined the group early on, neighbors who enjoyed hitting the gym after what Hongbin once described as “the soul-sucking drudgery of a nine to five job.”

“Hyeri’s pretty tough for a former sorority girl,” Sojin added. “Probably used to combat from fighting off those frat boys.”

“Hey, I take offense to that!” Hyuk exclaimed, a former frat boy himself. Then he added, “… You think she’d be up for, you know, some training?”

More groans from the others.

The conversation brought some much-needed levity to the situation, something the group badly needed to keep motivated. Everyone studiously avoided retreating too far into their thoughts, their memories. Hyuk and Hyeri, the youngest in the group, were the most resilient, with the benefit of their youthful spirits and energy to buoy them onward. It was the elders—Jaehwan, Sojin, and Hakyeon—who shouldered the burden of leading the group and upholding morale. Hyeri and especially Hyuk trained and fought with great relish. They rode on the fires of anger, despair, grief, and fear—but the elders were always around to assure them everything would be OK, and that they would live to see another day.

But there was no glory in killing, not even murderous aliens who mowed down the inferior humans with impunity. Humans were cattle to them; a nuisance to be rid of, before they achieved their goal of… what, exactly? Did they plan to colonize Earth? Strip-mine it? Destroy it for the fun of it? The latter seemed unlikely, for despite their eventual victory, the aliens suffered heavy losses at the hands of humanity’s greatest weapons. Yet there seemed an endless supply of invaders, dispatching shuttles from their behemoth vessels and troops flooding from their doors like some kind of horrific clown car.

Even as Hyuk laughed and joked with his new friends, there was a darkness lurking behind his eyes, one that Hakyeon was all too familiar with. Hyuk’s youth and idealism kept it at bay, at least for now. For Hakyeon, however—and Sojin as well, he suspected—it was far too easy to disappear into that darkness.

They had their own strategies to keep it at bay.


	5. Before

“You’re pretty good at this for a guy who’d only ever handled theater prop guns.”

“And you’re good at this for an academic computer thumper.”

“The hell is a computer thumper? You think of that one all by yourself?”

Glancing over the shoulder onto which her rifle was propped, Sojin grinned at Hakyeon with flashing dark eyes. Her hair was drawn back in a ponytail, glinting in the afternoon sunlight like a lick of red flame. Backlit by the sun setting over the Hollywood Hills, she was a study in contrasts—the delicate beauty of a model or starlet in her face, the ferocity of a lioness in the skilled hands clutching an assault rifle as though it weighed mere ounces. Beautiful and deadly, in more ways than one.

She took aim and fired. A dull _ping_ sounded as the soda can bounced off the fence.

Hakyeon followed suit, aiming carefully. The bullet whizzed past the can and embedded itself in the side of an abandoned Buick.

“You were distracting me!” he protested.

“And how, exactly, did I do that?” Sojin wanted to know. “By standing here?”

“You need to do more?”

His eyes glinted teasingly; she quickly turned away. Hakyeon thought he glimpsed a flush of pink in her round cheeks, but he didn’t give himself that much credit.

“Playing with phallic-shaped weapons all day gets you hot and bothered, huh?” she murmured.

“I’ve got something for you to play with.”

“Please, we’re in mixed company.”

“What mixed company?” he quipped, gesturing toward the empty lawn with one hand. Once impeccably manicured, he was sure, the lawn was now an overgrown mess, but it suited their purposes as a makeshift shooting range.

“Those virgin ears over there.” She nodded toward Hyuk, who stood several feet away firing at—and mostly missing—his target.

“Like the kid would hear anything over all this gunfire.”

“Like _anyone_ would hear anything over this gunfire.”

“We’ve got guys guarding the perimeter,” he assured her. “We’ll be fine.”

Sojin brushed past him, not entirely convinced. For such a ferocious lioness, she had an unnerving habit of retreating back into herself at the most unexpected moments. Striding over to the mansion’s front porch, she grabbed a soda can out of the cooler. Though it contained no ice, the cooler at least prevented the beverages from getting any warmer than sub-room temperature.

Hakyeon grabbed a soda and sank down onto the steps beside her, saying nothing. He knew by now that he had to let her come to him. She was so inscrutable, but maybe he liked it that way. They could escape from themselves and into each other, but never so deep they couldn’t find the surface again.

He no longer feared loss, if only because there was nothing left to lose.

“Do you ever think of them?” she asked.

He knew who she meant without saying so. “Sometimes. Not much point to it.” Like Hyuk, Hakyeon and Sojin had been separated from their families in the war. With the information superhighway currently at a dead halt, they both had no way of knowing what had become of them.

“I’m working on something.”

“What do you mean?”

“A radio. One of those old ones for emergencies. Bless this mansion’s owner for his earthquake preparedness.”

Hakyeon tried to smile at the joke. An earthquake seemed so banal compared to this reality.

“They took out the Internet, they’ve got their fancy head-telepathy radios or whatever,” Sojin remarked. It had been observed that the aliens somehow found a way to communicate with each other over distances yet never seemed to carry any communicators or other such devices. That left implants or some other kind of fancy alien-tech not immediately visible. “But they might not think to bother with good ol’ fashioned radio waves.”

“Oh, good thinking.” If there were other survivors out there, perhaps they were thinking the same thing.

They both fell silent, too reluctant to let the conversation proceed further and into the vicinity of hope. While some hope was good—hope kept them alive long enough to see another day—too much hope was not. False hope was not something they could afford in this new reality.

“They died before my eyes,” Hakyeon said eventually, before he was aware he said it.

Sojin turned to look at him.

“My company. We were on the way back to the hotel when the first wave of torpedoes hit. We jumped out of the car and ran. It was chaos. Everyone running down the middle of the street. But I was faster. I hid under a fallen billboard with some other people. But the others… my friends… didn’t make it. They were vaporized. No bodies, no blood. Just… nothing.”

“I’m sorry.” She knew how trite and inadequate the words are, but she said them anyway, and he appreciated the gesture.

“I never thought an oversized ad for insurance would save my life,” he joked, his voice dry but humorless.

“I guess advertising finally did the world some good,” she added. And he knew, in that moment, that she understood exactly what he meant. That she had experienced what he had.

The fell silent again, gazing out over the lawn as Hyuk continued firing at his hapless aluminum targets. When he finally hit one, he cheered and did a fistpump at his two observers.

Hakyeon and Sojin smiled back indulgently. If only soda cans were the only target this young man needed to hit.


	6. Now

Something was wrong.

Hakyeon sensed it from the moment his eyes opened. His body tensed, perfectly still as his eyes adjusted to the darkness and attempted to scan as much of the room as he could without moving his head. He and Sojin had set up camp in an empty classroom, laying their bedrolls out beside what had once been the teacher’s desk. He couldn’t see the classroom’s clock from here, not that it was accurate anymore anyway, but he’d guess it was sometime in the wee hours of the morning. Sojin had rolled over so her back was to him, and she was still—he couldn’t tell if she’d awakened or not. His hand gradually snaked into his bedroll in search of the handgun he left concealed there.

The click behind him was so subtle, he almost would’ve missed if he hadn’t been holding his breath.

“Don’t move.”

He froze. Within seconds, a flash of red and a blur of motion crystallized into Sojin propped on an elbow with her handgun trained on the forehead of Hakyeon’s assailant. “How about you don’t move, unless you like the sight of your brains spattered on the blackboard?”

He loved a woman who had a way with words.

“You wouldn’t, not while I’ve got a rifle to your boyfriend’s head.”

“You want to try me?” The hand holding the gun didn’t waver. Whatever had happened to this former grad student had forged her into steel.

Boots clomped into the classroom, and guns were drawn. From what Hakyeon could tell in the skimpy lighting, he thought he made out Jaehwan, Hyuk, and two of theirs. Hyuk and Jaehwan’s weapons were both trained on Hakyeon’s assailant.

“Looks like we’re at a standstill,” Jaehwan said.

“So this one’s your leader, then?” the assailant asked.

“I am,” Hakyeon said, before anyone else could reply. “Now why don’t you lower your guns and we’ll have a little talk.”

“The way I see it, we’ve got you outgunned and outnumbered. There’s way more of mine out there than yours in here.”

“So what’s your point then?”

“Your ammo and medical supplies. We’ll take them all, thank you very much.”

“Like hell you will!” Jaehwan exclaimed.

Hakyeon shot him a warning look. “I’m going to get up now, and you’re going to face me and talk to me like a man. I’m not doing this with the barrel of a gun pointed at my head.”

Hakyeon slowly rose to his feet. Sojin rose with him, never once lowering her weapon. Hakyeon caught her eye and tried to convey to her, _I got this._

“Everyone, lower your weapons,” he said. To his attacker, he said, “We just want to talk.”

“Ain’t nothing to talk about.” The gun was still aimed at his head.

Hakyeon raised his hands in a gesture of surrender, backing up slowly. The sun was starting to rise, and what little light seeped in the classroom windows lent Hakyeon a view of his attacker. From what he could see, the man of similar height—and Hakyeon was no small man—but considerably bulkier in build. His face was mostly hidden by a filthy kerchief, the bill of his cap drawn low over his forehead. Hakyeon could see only his eyes, which glinted coldly.

“We’re on the same side here,” he said. “We’re fighting the same enemy. Rather than fighting each other, how about we focus on that?”

“I ain’t fighting for no one but me,” his attacker declared. “It’s a cruel world out there. We do what we must to survive. Nothing personal, you see.”

“We can help you,” Hakyeon offered. “You can join us. We can work together.”

“And why would I want a gang as useless as this lot?” his attacker countered. “Your girl is a quick draw; I’ll give her that. And she sure is a looker. Perhaps we’ll take her with us.”

“Try it and you’ll be making out with this handgun,” Sojin warned.

“Feisty, too.” Under the kerchief, the man seemed to grin. “She’ll be a good addition to our band.”

“What is this, the old west?” Hakyeon demanded. “You’re not taking our ammo and you’re not taking our women. Come on, now.”

“And what are you going to do about it, then?”

Hakyeon sighed, raking a hand through his hair in frustration. “I guess we’re just going to have to fight.”

He lunged, hoping the element of surprise would lend an advantage in disarming his larger attacker. A gun went off—Sojin’s, most likely—and the next few moments were chaos. Gunshots rent what had been deathly silence before. A bullet pierced the ceiling of the classroom, bringing chunks of dry wall with it. Hakyeon and Sojin whirled around in the direction of the sound. One of their attacker’s men now had Hyuk in a chokehold, a gun to the young man’s temple. A bead of sweat rolled down Hyuk’s forehead, as he gazed at Hakyeon with wide eyes.

“So you’re going to give us your ammo and drugs,” the brigand leader said. “Or the pretty boy here ain’t gonna be so pretty no more.”

***

“We need to retaliate.”

A chorus of hearty agreement followed Jaehwan’s words. The group were gathered in the school’s cafeteria, none the worse for wear after the brigands’ departure, but their load considerably lighter.

Hyuk, whose only wound was, fortunately, to his pride, gazed about the group in embarrassment. “I’m sorry, you guys. This is all my fault.”

“No, it isn’t,” Hakyeon said firmly. He was still kicking himself for being caught unaware like that. Though he’d posted guards on a rotating schedule through the evening, the brigands had somehow still been able to catch them by surprise. Fortunately, both guards came through the ordeal with no injuries worse than goose eggs on their heads after meeting the butt of a rifle. Still, it smarted to think these men *still* got the better of them after all the precautions they had taken. It didn’t matter to him that their group of civilian survivors was led by a former dancer, a mystery author, and grad student, all of whom had only picked up weapons for the first time several months ago. They hadn’t survived this long by being stupid and complacent.

“That’s why we’ve got to retaliate,” Jaehwan insisted. “We’re fresh out of ammo and medical supplies, and it’s not like those are easy to find.”

“And by retaliating, we lose what little ammo we _do_ have,” Hakyeon pointed out. “Or worse.”

“I don’t see how we’d be any worse off,” Sojin countered. “If we tried to go on as we are, we’d be sitting ducks for the aliens.”

“We can’t risk losing any soldiers,” Hakyeon insisted.

“Right, so we can lose them to the aliens later.”

“The lady’s got a point,” Jaehwan said.

Hakyeon glared at him, pleased when the other man seemed to shrink back a little. If there was anything Hakyeon was good at, it was a well-deployed glare.

“How many people have we already lost in this war?” Hakyeon wanted to know. “How many more can we lose? We already almost lost Hyuk!”

“You might have been better off,” Hyuk mourned. “If not for me we wouldn’t be in this mess.”

“If it wasn’t you it would have been someone else.”

“This is pointless,” Sojin huffed. “I say we hit them tonight. We’re losing time and with every moment we waste, we’re less likely to track them down.”

“They had the element of surprise last night,” Jaehwan added. “I say we give them a taste of their own medicine.”

More cheers.

Hakyeon opened his mouth to argue, but at this point, he could see he was outvoted. Not even Sojin had his back, not that he would’ve expected her to. She was a woman who knew her own mind. Still, it would’ve been nice to have someone in his camp. Stung, he glared at her.

Unlike Jaehwan, she seemed immune to his glare. If anything, she’d just glare back.

Which she was doing right now.

“So let’s talk strategy,” she said, turning to the others.

It had been decided.


	7. Now

It turned out they needn’t have searched very far for the brigands. They had been camped out at an abandoned diner, off the beaten path and up on a hillside—a good vantage point to survey hapless travelers. Their location was discovered by Hongbin and Hyeri, who’d been out as scouts. They made a good scouting combo—Hyeri was quick and agile; Hongbin had the muscle. At any rate, once the duo returned, it was time to talk strategy.

Hakyeon reluctantly went along, contributing to the effort given that he didn’t have a choice, and would have preferred to get this over with as soon as possible. The youths jumped into the planning with relish, while Sojin remained quietly pragmatic. In Hakyeon’s opinion, this was when she was most dangerous—not when her eyes were alight with the passion of combat or sex; firing at alien invaders or raking her fingernails across Hakyeon’s skin; strong legs snapping alien limbs beneath her boot or locking around Hakyeon’s waist. Passion, she had no shortage of. It constantly simmered beneath the surface, fierce in its release, but deadly in its restraint.

They mounted their attack at dusk, in the cover of semidarkness. With their inferior numbers and ammo, they had to be quick and clever. They would prefer to avoid direct combat, as the entire point of the operation was simply to regain their belongings. After quickly and efficiently dispatching the brigands’ sentries—no great task, since, in their blustery complacence, the men were not exactly on high alert. Once inside, the group found the other brigands eating their dinner, which consisted largely of the ramen packs and ravioli cans snatched from their latest victims.

The leader of the brigands was not impressed as the group made their presence known. “So, back for more, huh?”

“As one of your helpful sentries informed us after some light persuasion,” Jaehwan began, “we found your armory. We’ve taken the liberty of rigging this shithole with some of that dynamite you stored up. You cross us, we light this place up like a Christmas tree.”

“Our requests are simple, really,” Hongbin jumped in. “We want our stuff back. With a small interest charge for making us go through the trouble of coming here.”

“And eating our food,” Hyeri jumped in. “I really had to hustle to get all that ramen.”

“You don’t have the balls,” the brigand leader declared.

“Try us.”

A bullet crashed through the window, whizzing through the air and embedding itself in the opposite wall—courtesy of sharp-shooter Yura, positioned outside. They had needed some insurance if the dynamite bluff didn’t work. The brigands whirled to face the broken window, but saw nothing.

“Next one won’t miss,” Jaehwan warned.

The brigand leader surveyed him coolly. “You think I haven’t run into a million young blowhards like yourself since the aliens took over? Young men who like to talk big, act tough, but in the end, ain’t got the goods to go through with it. This is a new world, kid. It ain’t pretty, but it is what it is. You aren’t be the first to challenge me, and you won’t be the last.”

Weapons were drawn. It was a standoff.

“Look, we don’t want any trouble.” Startling everyone, Hakyeon stepped forward, slowly lowering his weapon. Setting it on the ground in front of him, he stood up, hands held up in a gesture of surrender. The others all gazed at him in a mixture of shock and confusion. He ignored them.

“We’re just looking to survive, just like you. All we want is our stuff back. Otherwise, we’re sitting ducks.”

“And that’s my problem why?”

“You can’t hide out here forever, robbing people and stockpiling ammo,” Hakyeon pointed out. “You’ve been lucky the aliens haven’t found you yet. But they will, and you can’t win.”

“Who says they haven’t found us?” Something seemed to shift in the man’s tone, and Hakyeon recognized the haunted look that came over his eyes. That familiar cocktail of despair, fear, grief, and rage.

“You’ve lost someone.”

“We’ve all lost someone. What’s your point?”

“I saw them die,” Hakyeon said. “My friends. Right before my eyes. I was the only one left. For a long time, I felt guilty about that—unworthy. Wondering why I got to live, and they didn’t. Wondering what the point of my survival was, and not theirs. Wondering why I was here and what the point was.”

“Son, ain’t nobody got time for your kumbaya speech,” the brigand leader deadpanned. “They died, we lived. That’s just the reality.”

“I’ve been where you are,” Hakyeon went on. “Drifting, not knowing how to live in this new world. Maybe I still don’t know. I just know there has to be a better way than this. Think about who you lost. Is this what they’d want? Would they be pleased if they could see what you’ve become?”

“Don’t you bring my wife and kid into this!” the man exclaimed. “You don’t know what they’d want. But I do. They’d want me to live. They’d want me to live as long as I can and take as many of the alien bastards as I can with me.”

“And if we work together, we can do that.”

The man’s finger wavered on the trigger of his shotgun.

“Come on, put down the gun,” Hakyeon coaxed, slowly extending his hand. “We can talk about this, have some dinner. It doesn’t have to be this way.”

His hand extended, he edged forward. The brigand leader continued to aim his gun, showing no signs of surrendering it anytime soon.

“Go on and blow us all up, then,” he declared, “because that’s when I’d ever—“

A shot went off. Blood sprayed across the front of Hakyeon’s shirt and over his chin and jaw. Eyes wide and unseeing, mouth still open in mid-sentence, the brigand leader slumped to the floor was red blossomed across his shirt and pooled at Hakyeon’s feet.

Hakyeon’s head snapped up. Sojin stood before him, shotgun held high, a look of steely resolve across her face. Hakyeon stared at her, but she seemed unfazed.

“He wasn’t going to back down till one of you was dead,” she said. “I’d rather it not be you.”

Without any further commentary, she lowered her gun and walked away.


	8. Before

Night had fallen over Los Angeles, the balmy summer breeze wafting through the mansion, which had soon grown uncomfortably warm—power was on the fritz again, and so was the ceiling fan suspended above the bed that Hakyeon and Sojin shared.

He woke to find her side of it empty, as he often did, but the sheets still felt warm. She hadn’t awakened long ago. Swinging his feet off his side of the bed, he tugged on his jeans and and a black singlet, padding out of the room on bare feet.

No one else in the mansion seemed to be awake—at least, he didn’t hear anyone. Hongbin and Yura were sacked out on the plush leather couches in the living room, with Hyuk asleep in his bedroll on the floor. They were sharing night watch detail with Won-shik and Taekwoon. Out on the patio, Hakyeon spotted a familiar flash of red.

Tiptoeing around his sleeping friends, he made his way outside to join Sojin. She sat on one of the patio chairs donning Hakyeon’s shirt over a pair of his boxers, her feet bare and her legs long and pale in the light of the waxing moon. She had a bottle in her hand—merlot, not even bothering with a glass—and was gazing over the inky expanse of the valley, only a few scattered lights breaking through the darkness. There was a time not long ago when the valley would’ve been alight even in the middle of the night, the city lights casting a soft amber glow on the horizon.

The sky was mostly clear, a few clouds drifting across the indigo backdrop and the occasional pinprick of stubborn starlight glinting against it.

“You still can’t see the stars out here,” she remarked. “Looks like the apocalypse only made the smog even worse.”

“Those aliens are not abiding by air pollution laws.”

Sojin didn’t smile, just took another long swig of wine.

Hakyeon took the bottle from her and did the same.

They sat in silence for a while, gazing up at the sky, trying to remember a time when the stars didn’t turn into massive alien ships that blew up cities and massacred half the human population.

“I wonder if they fucked up their own planet,” Sojin remarked. “Maybe they polluted it and strip-mined it so bad they had to find another one.”

“If that’s true, they picked some damaged goods.”

Sojin shrugged. “We still exist.”

“Maybe they made their own doomsday weapon and now their planet’s in pieces,” Hakyeon suggested. “Or it got sucked into a singularity or something.”

“Or maybe their planet’s still fine, but they just wanted to go invade another one because they could.”

More silence.

“We won’t make it easy for them.”

“Won’t we?” Sojin countered. “When it’s this hard just to survive, how are we ever going to get our shit together to actually do some damage?”

“We can’t be all that’s left,” Hakyeon insisted. “There are others. We just need to find them. We just need time.”

“What is even their point?” Sojin wanted to know. “What is their endgame? Why don’t they just kill us and finish the job?”

“Maybe they can’t. Maybe we’re like that house on Hoarders, you know, the one with all the rats. Even when the animal rescue people got all the rats they could see, there were still a ton more, hiding in the woodwork and stuff. It took a long time to ferret them all out, and we’re smarter than rats.”

“Debatable.”

That, Hakyeon had to smile at.

“And you know, they’re not the interstellar humane society. They don’t adopt us out to loving alien families after catching us.”

Hakyeon was silent. So was she. They each helped themselves to more wine.

“They didn’t kill my husband, you know,” she said. “I did.”

Hakyeon gazed at her.

“They captured him. But then they sent him back to me. He was….” Her voice trailed off.

No one Hakyeon knew of had lived through capture by the aliens. This was the first time he’d _ever_ heard of them releasing someone.

“You don’t have to talk about it.”

She shook her head, gathering strength and taking another long pull of wine. “He… I thought he escaped. He was mute. I thought he was traumatized. I wasn’t going to push him. I thought he’d be OK until I saw… until I saw his eyes. They weren’t human eyes.

“I knew right then that he was gone. The man I knew was gone. He wanted to take me back with him. I said no, but he wouldn’t accept it. So I killed him. Shot him right between the eyes with the very same gun I’ve been taking out aliens with.”

Her gaze was fixed straight ahead. Hakyeon reached out instinctively, curling his hand over hers and resting both of their hands on her knee. She didn’t pull away.

“It was self-defense.”

She shook her head. “I told myself that. But in truth… I couldn’t see him that way. He was one of them… one of them wearing my husband’s skin. He wouldn’t want to be that… _thing._ So I ended it.”

“You did what you had to do.”

She shook her head again, but this time she didn’t reply.

“It’s not your fault,” Hakyeon insisted. “None of it is your fault. _They_ did this to us. You did what you thought was right.”

“But what’s right anymore?” Sojin demanded. “What kind of world is it where killing a man is doing the right thing?”

“He wasn’t a man anymore.”

“What kind of world is it where a man isn’t a man anymore?”

That, he had no answer to. “I don’t know.”

They lapsed back into silence after that, while, far off in the valley, one of the lights went out.


	9. Now

The group took no time to regroup from their temporary setback. They set off promptly the next day, having replenished their food, medical supplies, and ammo supplies. The remaining members of the brigand gang were left in peace at the diner, with the food and ammo they’d originally had before robbing the travelers—well, a little less, as the latter group had seen fit to charge some interest for their troubles.

Hakyeon rode beside Sojin at the front of the pack. He hadn’t spoken to her yet except for impersonal, necessary communication about the journey. She’d done what she had to do, and she’d been right. But it would take him a while before he forgot the cold, numb look in her eyes as she did the grisly deed.

“Everyone, be on high alert,” Hakyeon announced. “We’re heading into alien territory.” According to the remaining members of the brigand group, bands of alien troops had been sighted in the area.

The group stopped at midday for a rest and a meal at an abandoned service station. The adjacent convenience store had been mostly picked clean, though the group managed to recover some items. As Hakyeon enjoyed a meager meal of fritos and some beef jerky, he noticed Sojin sitting several feet away, tinkering with her radio. She was still working on that thing?

She saw him watching, and shrugged. “Might as well. If the militia is listening, they’ll know we’re coming.”

“You get anything yet?”

She shook her head. “Sent out transmissions in four languages. Nothing yet.”

“You speak four languages?”

An arch smile flashed on her face, the first time he’d seen her smile since… the incident. “I’m a complex woman.”

_That’s for sure,_ Hakyeon thought.

“About the diner thing….” He fidgeted, hesitating to meet her eyes. “You made the right call.”

“You did your best.”

“I know.” _It just wasn’t enough._ “You saved my life back there. Thanks.”

“You’d have done the same for me.”

Would he? Did he really have the capacity to kill someone ? Killing aliens was different—they’d come to Earth to conquer, and would cut him and anyone else down without a second thought. With the aliens, it was kill or be killed. He wondered, briefly, if there were any who didn’t feel that way. Any who didn’t care to exterminate the humans, but were just doing what they were ordered to do. The thought disturbed him. Though he was sure the aliens had a way of communicating amongst themselves, he had never seen any discord in their ranks. For all he knew, though, the ones attacking them were low-level grunts. None of the group had ever encountered one of the higher-ups before. The troops all seemed singlemindedly focused on one thing only—kill or capture.

But humans… he’d never killed a human before this war. He’d actually never killed a human before this day. Even when he was scavenging in the city, he’d kept to himself before falling in with Sojin and the group. He’d seen other humans kill each other over scraps in the debris of a ruined convenience store. But he’d never done it. He couldn’t bring himself to.

But has he looked down at Sojin, skilled fingers tinkering with dials on the radio, brow furrowed in concentration… he’d do anything for her.

Suddenly, shouts rang out from the opposite side of the camp. Hakyeon and Sojin craned their necks to see Won-shik running toward them. “Aliens. Hongbin and I spotted a mess of ‘em while on patrol. About a dozen, I’d say. They’re heading this way.”


	10. Now

“Shit,” Hakyeon cursed under his breath. To the rest of the group, he announced, “Incoming hostiles, everyone take cover and be ready for combat.”

The group scattered and got into battle position, waiting. Hakyeon ducked down behind a dilapidated and half-rusted pickup truck alongside Sojin, Jaehwan, and Hyuk. The youth’s eyes glimmered with barely-concealed adrenaline; he shouldered his rifle with purpose and zeal. Hakyeon could not share his excitement. The kid relished combat in an unsettling way, particularly given how little combat he’d actually seen. That was probably _why_ he relished it. Hakyeon almost envied the kid his innocence, but did not envy him the moment he would lose it.

It began with shouts and an explosion of gunfire. A small company of alien troops, they could handle. Hakyeon and Sojin took out one the troops with a bit of teamwork; even Hyuk got in a lucky shot or two. The three of them then aided Jaehwan in taking out another. The aliens were being knocked over like rolling pins. A shiver of uneasiness slid down Hakyeon’s spine. _This is too easy_.

Suddenly, more gunshots exploded through the air—and those shots were coming _toward_ them. “The hell?” Jaehwan yelled, his head swiveling wildly about to find the source of the gunfire. It wasn’t any of their own.

“The bandits!” Hyuk exclaimed. Sure enough, Hakyeon recognized the motley crew advancing upon them in trucks and jeeps—followed by alien troops in their own strange land vehicles. He’d encountered them a few times before, and they were like nothing he had ever seen—reminiscent of tanks, but sleeker, more streamlined. Coated in a glossy metal alloy, their shape seemed vaguely biological, curved like muscle and sinew and infinitely stronger. Bullets bounced off the hull like they were made of rubber, including the narrow window curving around the front of the vehicle and the other up in the turret. The windows must have been made of a transparent metal alloy, because they sure didn’t shatter like glass.

_Shit, shit, shit._

“So what, they’re alien sympathizers now?” Jaehwan wanted to know.

“No.” Sojin’s face had drained of color as she gazed upon their new set of attackers.

“They turned them,” Hakyeon explained hastily. “When they capture us, they make us one of them.”

“But how?” Hyuk wanted to know. “Brainwashing?”

“It’s the eyes,” Sojin murmured. “When they come closer, you can see their eyes. They are not human eyes.”

“Well, we’re not letting them get that close,” Jaehwan declared. “Everyone, open fire!”

They did, though Hakyeon recognized the futility of the order even as he fulfilled it. From her expression, he knew Sojin did as well. They were screwed. They were outgunned, outmanned, and outmaneuvered. Even as the group retreated back into the cover of the gas station, he knew it was only a matter of time.

Jaehwan knew it too, but he wasn’t going down without a fight. Neither was any of them. He fired maniacally until he was out of ammo, switched weapons, and fired some more while Hyuk reloaded for him. Sojin ran out of ammo on her rifle and now brandished two handguns, firing simultaneously. The bandits fell one by one—they might have been turned, but they were still human, with all of the human weaknesses and vulnerabilities. But before the last one fell—a man, barely older than Hyuk—he got close enough for Hakyeon to see his eyes. They were inhumanly wide, pupils black and dilated, blank and utterly, terrifyingly empty.

These people were not human anymore.

The aliens were overtaking them, now that their human cannon fodder was mostly taken care of. Still, Hakyeon kept fighting, firing round after round. He thought he saw Hyuk go down beside him. He was out of ammo. Sojin was still firing. It wouldn’t be long until she ran out.

So Hakyeon did the only thing he could think to do. Throwing himself between her and the approaching alien attacker, he fought viciously, first with guns then with his knife. He felt the satisfying slide of metal against alien flesh as the blade sunk into his assailants vulnerable neck, but then his vision blurred, large red dots spreading until they all blended together. He thought he heard Sojin screaming. But the red was overtaking him, fading into black, and finally into nothing.

It was over.

***

“If he lives, I’m going to kill him.”

“Sojin….”

Viciously, she yanked the soiled bandage across her own leg, flinching at the pain. “We have to go get him.”

“You know firsthand what they do to their prisoners,” Jaehwan reminded her.

“We have to get him,” she insisted. Her eyes were wild, red-rimmed, flashing with terror and desperation. Her memories of the final moments of the battle were hazy, but enough to recall Hakyeon being the foolhardy asshole he always was and throwing himself in front of her as she emptied the last of her two clips. She wanted to help him—was ready to plunge into the fight—until Jaehwan grabbed her, dragging her back. She fought him with the ferocity of a lioness, and eventually Hongbin had to come over and help him. Hyuk’s prone body lay next to Hakyeon’s, and the surviving aliens were dragging the two of them back to their vehicle.

Still fighting her two friends, Sojin eventually passed out, likely from blood loss from a wound in her leg she hadn’t realized she had. It turned out to be a phase burn, not so severe it was life-threatening, but enough to knock her out for a bit and cause her to walk with a limp now that Taekwoon had fixed it.

“They got Hyuk, too,” Jaehwan reminded her, his own eyes clouding over at the loss of the young man he’d all but taken under his wing. “But we need to face the possibility that our people… might not be themselves if we see them again.”

“We won’t know unless we get them.”

“And I agree,” Jaehwan reasoned. “But we can’t just go rushing in half-cocked. We need a plan.”

“We need him.”

A silence fell over the two of them. The others were busy licking their wounds and regrouping as best they could in the cover of the convenience store’s stockroom—fortunately, they’d recovered some goods that could be used for first aid. Sojin was only interested in the bottle of cheap vodka that Taekwoon had used for the double duty of disinfection and anesthesia.

“I’m sorry,” she muttered.

“What for?”

“Your eye.”

“My eye? …. Oh, that. It’s nothing,” Jaehwan assured her. A deep bruise had blossomed above one eye, part of the damage Sojin had done while struggling against him. “Remind me never to piss you off.”

“Too late.”

Neither of them laughed at the joke.

“We’ll get him,” Jaehwan assured her.

***  
“We are human survivors of the alien invasion, currently in… shit, I don’t even know where the fuck we are anymore. Somewhere in central Cali south of the bay. If anyone can here us, please answer.”

The radio’s speakers responded with nothing but the dull hum of static.

Sojin wanted to throw something, but she valued both the radio and the bottle of vodka beside it too much, so she settled for slumping back against the wall of the stockroom and draining the last of the bottle. She’d been broadcasting the message in every language she knew for the past half hour or so, though the broadcasts got steadily more nonsensical the more she drank. The phase burn on her left leg throbbed mightily, the angriest of the aches and pains she’d accumulated from the battle She’d forgone any painkillers more potent than the vodka, as Taekwoon needed them to treat those more seriously injured. She had to keep going. She had to keep doing _something._

She had to stop seeing Hakyeon staring at her as her husband had, his eyes the same empty pools of black.

She threw the now-empty vodka bottle.

“Whoa, easy there. It’s just me,” a male voice piped up.

Through the haze of alcohol and her pounding headache, Sojin glanced up to see Jaehwan standing before her, concern etched across his handsome features.

“You OK?” he asked.

“Peachy.”

“You’re right; it was a stupid question.” Sidestepping the broken glass, he slowly sank down beside her. “No luck with the radio, huh?”

She didn’t answer. The others were resting, tending to their wounds, trying to regroup as best they could. Sojin let them do it without her. She’d been leading this group with Hakyeon for too long. They’d gotten them this far. They’d gotten people killed and he, among others, abducted.

Real bang-up leadership job there.

“He’s tough,” Jaehwan tried to assure her. “It’ll take more than an evening to break him.”

“How would you know?” she fired back. “We have no idea what they do to them. We don’t know how they turn them or how to turn them back, or if we even can.”

A longer stretch of silence. She felt Jaehwan’s eyes on her, sensed his sympathy, his helplessness. It made her want to scream.

“I can’t do this again!” To her horror, a sob seemed to catch in her throat on the words. She forced it back. “Not to him. Not to Hakyeon.”

Jaehwan seemed mildly startled by her outburst, not knowing what she meant—she’d only ever told Hakyeon about her husband. Jaehwan didn’t ask her, though. “You won’t have to. If… if it ever comes down to that, which it won’t, I’ll do it for you.”

“No, I have to do it,” Sojin insisted, despite her earlier words. “It has to be me.”

“You don’t have to do this, you know,” Jaehwan said. “We’re all in this together. You and Hakyeon got us this far. Now, let us fight for you.”

“We got you into this mess.”

“Hey, we all decided, remember? We chose to find the militia. You have got to stop taking responsibility for everything, Sojin. You are not our sin-eater.”

“But I am,” she mumbled. “It’s the only thing I know how to do. Hakyeon’s the hero. I’m the sin-eater.”

“No, you’re not.”

But Sojin was too tired to argue anymore. She was rapidly succumbing to the vodka and the headache and the injuries and the all-consuming, numbing, oppressive exhaustion.

She barely noticed as Jaehwan tucked his folded-up jacket under head as a makeshift pillow and pulled her own tattered coat over her prone form.


	11. Now

It was dark. There was a buzzing noise, like the distant hum of bees. The buzzing grew louder, closer. Deeper. Harsher. Then the buzzing was in his head, pounding in his brain, pushing against his skull and trying to explode outward.

Hakyeon’s eyes flew open. Light lanced through his retinas like white-hot blades and he flinched, squeezing his eyes shut against the onslaught. As he cautiously cracked one open again, he realized the light was like nothing he’d seen before. It wasn’t sunlight, wasn’t any artificial light invented by humans. It was hard for him to describe. It was just _different_.

It was alien.

Everything hurt. His limbs ached; his head throbbed, a combination of a splitting headache and a sharp stabbing external pain. His hair felt plastered to his forehead; sticky and wet. He tried to raise a hand to push it aside and realized he couldn’t. Pain shot through his arm as he tugged; both wrists were bound at his side with something freakishly strong. He wiggled his legs and found his ankles also bound. A hard, cool surface bit into his back, and he concluded he must be bolted down to a table or slab.

At least he could still move his head. Turning to left, he saw another table a few feet away from him, a man also bolted to its surface. Hyuk. With a shiver of dread, Hakyeon peered at the table beyond Hyuk and saw a female figure there. Blood matted the locks of short hair falling across her cheek, but he recognized Hyeri. Turning to his other side, Hakyeon glimpsed another man, Won-shik. Even further beyond Hyeri were more humans, but he didn’t recognize them.

They all lay within a cavernous and windowless room, which seemed to pulse and hum like a living thing. The light glaring into Hakyeon’s eyes prevented him from getting a look at the ceiling, but he did catch get a glimpse of the walls. They seemed constructed of material resembling living tissue, coated in some kind of thick hide. Heavy beams of metal alloy were threaded among the tissue, snaking their way up to the ceiling. Hakyeon almost retched. A seamless blend of technology and biology. It was grotesque and beautiful.

Even his restraints seemed to be made of this living tissue, and actually seemed to tighten the more he struggled. His hands began to tingle from the circulation being cut off, and he reluctantly relaxed his body. After a moment, the blood rushed back into his limbs, stinging like a thousand tiny needles.

He tried to call Hyuk’s name. His voice came out hoarse and barely audible. His mouth felt like it was stuffed with cotton, his throat parched and rough as sandpaper.

_Where the hell were they_?

Suddenly screams—human screams—rent the air. Harsh and animalistic, they were the kind of agonized screams that sent chills down Hakyeon’s spine and wrapped around him like icy fingers. If he were religious, he would have prayed for it to stop, for this poor soul to be delivered in whatever way he could be, even death. But the screams kept going, the seconds stretching out interminably, until finally the voice grew hoarser and softer and mercifully stopped.

Hakyeon heard clicking noises sprinkled with a few low grunts, sounds he’d come to associate with their alien invaders. The sounds were getting closer. He closed his eyes and kept his head immobile, hoping if he still appeared unconscious they’d pass him by.

Footsteps. They were too light, too regular, to belong to the aliens. The latter tended to lumber along when they weren’t in combat—then, they became terrifyingly quick and agile given their size. No, these were human footsteps. Hakyeon partially opened one eye, peering through the narrow slit between his eyelids. The sight before him almost made him recoil. There stood a man, a stranger, who surely should have been dead—his arm was broken and twisted at a grotesque angle; blood matted his hair from a gaping head wound. The man turned, and Hakyeon could see his eyes—pupils huge and dilated and pitch-black, devoid of all humanity. The whites were bright crimson, blood oozing from the corners of the eyes and cutting grotesque tracks through the grime on the man’s cheeks.

Grunting like one of the aliens, the man grasped his injured arm and, without even flinching, yanked the joint back into place with a sickening crack. Over the course of barely a few minutes, the limb seemed to regenerate, bones mending and flesh knitting. _What the hell had the aliens done to him?_

The human turned, not seeming to register Hakyeon on his radar, and walked straight ahead without a second glance. Hakyeon momentarily sagged with relief. If this man could do what he’d done to himself, he didn’t want to imagine what he’d do to someone else. More clicking. Through his partially open eye, Hakyeon glimpsed another alien. Out of its armor, it looked almost like an extension of the fleshy part of the walls—hunched, hulking, grotesque. It donned a kind of drab robelike garment, a hood pulled over its large head and partially obscuring its face. A hand emerged from one of the sleeves, freakishly long, talonlike fingers curled around a container of some kind. Pausing beside the human on the table beyond Hyeri, the alien reached into the container and pulled something out.

The thing was long and stringy, almost like a worm. Holding the hapless human’s eye open, the alien dangled the worm thing over it. Hakyeon watched in horror as the worm thing slithered right into the human’s eye, followed by another as the alien dropped more of the worms onto its victim. The man’s other eye flew open, and then the screaming began.

Forgetting himself, Hakyeon started to struggle again. The restraints tightened, viselike, around his limbs, cutting into his flesh and becoming slick with his blood. He was going to die in here. He, Hyeri, Hyuk, Won-shik… they were going to die, and it was going to be more horrific than anything he could have imagined.

He hadn’t seen Sojin or Jaehwan anywhere. If they’d gotten away, that meant others might have escaped, too. At least they’d be spared this fate. That is, provided they didn’t try to play hero and rescue them.

_If they were smart, they wouldn’t come. They would give us up for the lost cause we are. They wouldn’t be that foolhardy._ Sojin _wouldn’t be that foolhardy._

Except that she would be, and Hakyeon knew it. It was probably why he loved her.

The bitter irony struck him that it took being bolted to a table in some creepy alien lab, about to die horribly, for him to have this realization.

He loved her enough to pray that she wouldn’t come for him. He loved her enough to pray that when he did return to her, that she would find the strength to save them both and land a bullet right between his vacant black eyes.


	12. Now

As Sojin lay in the convenience store stockroom, mired down by a deep, drugging sleep, the radio beside her crackled to life.

***

The town of Monterey, California, was known for two things: a tourist destination, and a military base. The base had been leveled in the initial invasion, but the site where it once stood had been repurposed. It served as the landing site for one of the aliens’ grander aircraft. The vehicle was small and streamlined enough to cut through the Earth’s atmosphere with ease, yet large enough to house a fully functional lab, transport several terrestrial vehicles, and pack enough firepower to light up a city, if it must. Vehicles similar to these had brought the aliens down to Earth after their orbiting military vessels took out the military bases and major population centers from space. Though the humans were still reeling from the mass destruction, the invaders could not afford to take chances.

As it was, the remaining stragglers of the humans’ military _had_ gotten in a few lucky shots and downed a couple of the alien shuttles. However, most of them made it to the surface unscathed to begin the aliens’ ground campaign. They were in the habit of adopting human military sites as their own bases of operation, with an overlord on site issuing orders to his subordinates. What little remained of the infrastructure after the bombings could be co-opted by the alien forces to defend their shuttle, though even grounded it still had the capacity to blast any incoming charges to kingdom come.

Which was why the rescue mission had to be clever. Tracking down the base had not been difficult—the aliens didn’t seem to care how much damage their vehicles did to the terrain. However, once the group discovered the base, infiltrating the seemingly impregnable fortress would be another matter. But eventually, they did find a way.

They had made this discovery by accident while patrolling the area. Hongbin and Yura had stumbled upon a line of captured and turned humans, guarding the perimeter with their alien weapons. They came back to report their findings, and an idea took shape among the remaining group members. They’d hijack a small group of turned humans, incapacitate them, steal their alien weapons, and wait until another group came along to follow inside the compound.

The catch was, of course, that nobody would think to look at their eyes, and that none of the turned humans would recognize the imposters in their midst.

But did they have any choice?

The plan also gave them time to familiarize themselves with the alien weaponry. They carried rifles similar to those that humans did, but they fired laser beams instead of bullets. The alien rifles were much lighter than human ones, didn’t require reloading, and were fairly intuitive when it came to firing. The different settings took some figuring out (the group took out some unfortunate tree branches in the process) but they soon felt comfortable enough to use them if necessary.

Once inside the compound, the mission was simple—get their people, and get the hell out of there.

None of the survivors dared to voice the fear they all privately harbored—that they might see one of their people among these brainwashed human soldiers.

Getting in went according to plan. It was actually surprising how oblivious with aliens were within their own sanctum—so confident were they that humans wouldn’t find their way in unless they were brought there, they didn’t think to check for interlopers. Sojin suppressed a shudder as she and Jaehwan passed through the cargo bay door of the huge shuttle, marching past row upon row of the terrestrial vehicles before arriving at a massive lift.

She reacted to the ship’s inside with simultaneous awe and revulsion—the mechanical engineer in her marveled at the complexity and brilliance of the biomechanical hybrid; the human in her recoiled at the walls of skin, metal, and tissue. Jaehwan walked in front of her, and though he kept his poker face on, she saw the full-body shudder he gave as he took in his surroundings.

Once off the lift, they continued to follow the other turned humans, mentally clocking every turn and corridor. They came to a stop outside of a door where the line of humans waited. A moment later the door slid open, and an alien donning a robelike garment appeared in the doorway, luminescent eyes narrowing as it scanned the line of humans in front of it. The eyes came to a stop on Sojin and Jaehwan.

They’d been made.

“Showtime,” Jaehwan muttered.

***

Hakyeon stopped struggling.

At some point, he had begun to realize the futility of the gesture. His wrists and ankles bruised and bloodied and no closer to freedom than before, he forced himself to _think_. He had to do _something_. He couldn’t let his people fall victim to this horror.

The alien stopped in front of Hyeri. Gripping the container, it plucked a worm out and dangled it above her eye.

“No!” Miraculously, Hakyeon seemed to find his voice. “Not her! Take me first!”

The alien glanced up, mildly startled, most likely because it wasn’t used to its victims waking up before the grisly procedure. Its glassy eyes narrowed. It made some vague clicking sounds as it regarded him, then began walking toward him.

As the alien loomed above him, Hakyeon realized with a sinking heart that he hadn’t really done anything for Hyeri but postpone the inevitable. So he’d get turned first. The poor young woman wasn’t even conscious, let alone in any position to escape. But he’d cried out in desperation, on impulse.

At least he could make it as hard for this asshole as possible. He squeezed his eyes shut.

“ _No!_ ”

His eyes flew open at the sound of the shout. Phase fire whirred about him, one beam flashing above his body and slicing into the arm of the alien standing over him. The alien gave a sharp screech of pain and dropped the container, worms wiggling across the floor and a few scattered stragglers falling on Hakyeon. He struggled vigorously as the worms slithered across his body, trying to find any possible orifice to crawl into. His black t-shirt shirt was tucked into his pants and covered his torso, but it wouldn’t take them long to make their way up to his neck.

More phase fire. The alien standing above him went down. Suddenly, the pressure on his ankles was released, and then on his wrist. He swiveled his head to behold a vision so welcome he’d have wondered if it were the afterlife, if the painful rush of blood to his feet weren’t so very real. Sojin stood beside the table, her knife slicing through his restraints, which emitted haunting shrieks of agony and as the severed bits wiggled about. She grimaced, briefly shaking drops of their greenish blood from her fingers. With his free hand, Hakyeon swatted away the remaining worms while Sojin freed his other wrist.

“I’d say you were a sight for sore eyes, but….”

“Still making bad puns. You’re fine.”

Sliding his legs off the table, he grasped her arm as he stood up. “Hyeri….”

“Jaehwan’s got her. Hyuk too. Hongbin’s freeing Won-shik now.”

Phase fire still flew about the lab as the group gathered up the last of their people as well as the remaining unturned humans.

“Where’d you get the alien gear?”

“I’ll explain later.”

“I’m holding you to that. Don’t suppose you’ve got another for me?”

Sojin withdrew a pistol from her boot and tossed it to Hakyeon. “You think I’d only show up with one firearm?”

“You’re a regular girl scout.”

The group made their way out or the lab, sidestepping bodies of aliens and turned humans. Hakyeon’s stomach churned violently, but there was nothing they could do for them now. The alien ship had been alerted to the rebels’ presence, and troops had amassed in the corridor ready to open fire.

“You guys got anything else up your sleeves?” Hakyeon wanted to know. “Now would be the time.”

“Only this.” Jaehwan produced a grenade and lobbed it at the approaching troops.

“I take it this base doesn’t have metal detectors?”

“Seriously? My high school had tighter security.”

Turning and running as far as they could in the opposite direction, they hit the ground as the blast razed through the corridor behind them. Unfortunately, the debris blocked their path to the lift, and the group was forced to find another way off the ship. They hadn’t made it far when they encountered another wall of alien troops. They were trapped.

“I don’t suppose you have another one of those?” Hakyeon asked Jaehwan.

“You don’t even want to know where I had to hide that one.”

“We’re surrounded, aren’t we?” Sojin asked.

Hakyeon turned to her. “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid time?”

Gripping her rifle with one hand, Sojin reached out with her free hand. Hakyeon shifted the pistol in his other hand and reached for hers. Clasping hands, they raised their weapons, looking not at the aliens but at each other.

So he was going to die today after all. But at least this way, it was on his own terms, as his own person, with the people who had at some point in the past several months become his second family. With the woman he loved. If their fate was to go down in a blaze of gunfire together, well, it would have been worth it.

She’d saved him one last time.

They fired.

They were still firing when they realized that no one was firing back. Startled, their hands still clasped tightly, Hakyeon and Sojin looked up. The alien troops were falling like dominoes, the corridor echoing with the staccato burst of mass gunfire. Through the increasingly thinning wall of alien troops moved a new set of fighters—human, not turned. They donned human-made clothing and sported human-made weapons. The figure in the front, strikingly tall—almost as much as the aliens—signaled toward the group. “Time to get the hell out of here.”

They ran.


	13. Now

“Don’t you ever do that to me again, or I swear I’ll kill you!”

Eyes flashing almost as brilliantly as her hair, Sojin jabbed a finger in Hakyeon’s direction.

He blinked innocently. “Do what?”

“You know what!” She moved toward him, her finger poking him right in the chest. “That hero bullshit. And don’t you tell me you’re just trying to protect me.”

“I think I might be the one who needs protection here.”

Retreating momentarily, she glared at him. “I mean it. You could’ve been killed! You could’ve been….” Her voice trailed off.

“But I wasn’t.” Closing the distance between them, he captured her hand and folded it between his own.

“But what if you were?” she persisted. “Don’t you _dare_ leave me to do this without you.”

It was the closest to vulnerable he’d ever seen her. It startled him. Humbled him.

“You know what the only thing on my mind was the whole time I was there?” he asked. “Coming back to you—as me, not one of their… you know.”

“I do.” There was no escaping the haunted look in her eyes at the mention of the topic. Maybe it would never go away, just as the vision of his friends and colleagues dying before his eyes never would. But he and Sojin were both still here. And as long as they were, there was still something to fight for. To live for. To die for. It wasn’t enough to merely stay alive in this strange, violent new world. There was no point in humans surviving if humanity did not.

They were now in the bedroom they shared at the militia’s underground stronghold. It was far from luxurious, but it was the safest and most secure place they’d had to lay their heads since this all began. The Dragon himself had intercepted Sojin’s radio signal and come to their aid, following the group to the alien stronghold and moving in when things went sideways. Though the battle had been won, the war was far from over. But for the first time, Hakyeon finally allowed himself to feel something he thought he’d forgotten how to.

Hope.

“I’m in love with you, Sojin.”

She blinked, clearly not expecting that. “It took a near-death experience to realize that?”

“Oh, _that’s_ how you respond when I pour out my heart to you?”

“I thought it was stating the obvious.”

He frowned, dropping her hand. “It’s that obvious, huh?”

A hint of a smile tilted her full crimson lips. “You’re not subtle.”

“Oh, really? How’s this for subtlety?”

A shriek escaped her lips as he suddenly snatched her up in his strong arms, carrying her across the room while she halfheartedly kicked and struggled. He tossed her onto the bed as unceremoniously as a sack of ammo and, in a smooth movement, pinned her to the mattress beneath his lean and powerful body.

“Is that supposed to impress me?” she quipped, breathlessly.

“I was hoping for a proper response to what I said earlier.”

“But it’d be under duress.”

“Yeah, you’re really under duress.”

Abruptly, she pushed against him and rolled them both over, so now he lay flat on his back while she straddled his waist. “That’s better.”

He grinned, the woman above him nothing short of a vision in cargo pants and a black singlet, brilliant red hair streaming around her shoulders and backlit by the room’s sole lamp.

“So if I tell you I love you,” she drawled, “do you promise to behave yourself?”

“Of course.”

“Well, then I’m not telling you anything.”

Her smile bloomed, warming him more than the blanket beneath his back. She didn’t have to say it, but he could wait. They had time.


End file.
